The Ghost Rider by Ismail Kadare
A brother rises from his grave to keep his promise of bringing his sister home from a far-off land. Or does he? In retelling this ancient Albanian legend, Kadare examines that universally shared aspect of grief whereby we long to see our dead again. Exploring what happens when fantasy becomes reality, he weaves in other stories without once letting up his narrative drive. I read it at night and loved being properly frightened.

Pure by Andrew Miller
I read this a second time. My first was fast; I was uncomfortably hungry to discover how the provincial Jean-Baptiste would engineer the demolition of a Parisian cemetery bursting at its 18th-century seams and to see his desire for Héloïse reciprocated. But then there was Miller’s ‘thin feather of smoke’, his ‘fat orange sun’ and ‘fire smoored’, so when I’d finished I started over, listening more slowly to the sounds he makes, lingering in his spaces.

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
This is as much an exquisitely painful poem as it is a novel. His family murdered, Jakob emerges feral and mud-masked from a Polish forest to be rescued by Athos, part-saint, part-scientist. They drive through the night to a new kind of hiding in war-torn Zakynthos and on to partial freedom in Canada. We return to Greece by the close, having learned that when humanity rips itself to pieces, love will persist.

Every Contact Leaves A Trace by Elanor Dymott is published today in Vintage paperback.